Cecilia's Samplers Retreat

This week I have been on a fun stitching retreat sponsored by Cecilia’s Samplers of Branson, Missouri. This is the first of their two November retreats. I managed to extend my retreat by a couple of days by driving down to Janet’s home in the Kansas City area on Tuesday and spending the night. On Wednesday we drove to Sharyn’s home and then caravanned to Branson. Sharyn and Janet are two friends I met on a stitching cruise.

The retreat planner, Holly, had the room all decked out in a carnival theme. At our places we had several fun little gifts including the Fall issue of Spool magazine and a neat little personalized zipper pouch made from foam sheets. We stopped long enough to pick up our $100 gift certificate for the shop, along with our gift cards for three area restaurants, and headed out again. We had lunch first and then made our first (of several) trips to the shop!

Our table

Some of our gifts

Another highlight of the weekend was the onsite shopping. They brought over a number of things from the shop that they marked down by 50%. Many of us took advantage of those great deals. I was thrilled to get a Nantucket basket set and pattern for stitching accessories. Okay, maybe I picked up more than one pattern for stitching accessories. I think I may have a fetish for those things!

New stash

One night we had Buck a Bag. You paid one dollar for a sandwich size bag that you used to stuff as many pieces of fabric in as you could while still being able to close the bag. I purchased two  bags and chose 29 pieces of varying counts and colors of fabric. Many of them will be just perfect for ornaments, bookmarks and other small projects. Maybe I could some of them for those small accessory patterns I keep buying.

My Buck a Bag fabric

During the weekend we played games to win tickets to use for door prizes. The top prize was a $100 gift certificate for the retreat of your choice. Sharyn won one of those! And yes, our little group has already made our deposit for next year’s first November retreat.

This retreat has to be one of the best stitching bargains around. We added a night to our stay so for $325 we had four nights in a three room condo (nothing fancy, just very basic), a $100 gift certificate to the shop,  three $15 food cards for area restaurants, two catered in meals, fun little surprises throughout the weekend, as well as games and a door prize drawing.  Plus, we had another 10% in store credit for everything we bought through Friday, including the $100 they gave us to begin with! We cannot figure out how they do it but are very glad they do!!